Reductions in force are bottom-line decisions that impose disruption without regard to individual circumstances.
After years building a career as a viral immunology researcher, I returned to work from maternity leave, expecting a period of readjustment. Instead, I walked into a building that had already begun to empty itself.
Our company was in the throes of the largest layoff in its history. Anxiety moved through every hallway, even before the notices reached us. My division had been told we were safe, but that assurance no longer carried much weight. Lunchrooms where we laughed and vented fell quiet. Hallways grew still, as the place slowly exhaled its workforce.
At home, I was struggling with postpartum depression, trying to find my footing as a new mother while everything else shifted. There was a kind of exhaustion that made even ordinary tasks feel slightly out of reach. The night before, I had watched The Secret of NIMH in an attempt to distract myself from work.
It was in this state of mind that I was asked to euthanize 30 research mice to make room for a new shipment. Instead, I boxed them up, brought them home, and released them in the woods behind my apartment.
Shortly after, in the chaos of broader layoffs, my employment ended. I was escorted off campus as though I was an animal rights activist, someone to be feared I stood alone on the sidewalk, not knowing what the next step would be with the closing of the heavy iron gates behind me cutting off future opportunities.
The routines that had previously anchored my life suddenly came untethered, but the consequences arrived slowly. Rent payments and bills accumulated. Small expenses became a constant source of stress in the background of daily life. A future that had once felt promising began to unravel at the edges.
My husband had left his consulting work so we could relocate to begin a new chapter with this job. We had moved to a state where we knew few people, without the buffer of family support, relying on the stability of a job that no longer existed. It had carried the weight of everything we were building toward: healthcare, income, and a foundation for our growing family.
Depression deepened in the quiet way these things often do. The irony was hard to miss. That I had worked for Pfizer, known for developing treatment for erectile dysfunction, yet they failed to recognize signs of postpartum depression in their own employee.
I reached out to friends. Few stayed close in ways that mattered more than I could fully express. Others became harder to read, marked by silences that may have been hesitation, discomfort, or simply not knowing how to respond.
I carried a sense of shame. I worried that I had failed my husband, my child, friends and colleagues who had supported me along the way. Questions about work became difficult to answer. Conversations that once felt natural now required effort. Explaining what had happened became more taxing than avoiding the question altogether.
Financial strains did not allow much time to wait for the next fitting opportunity. Job applications also became a ritual of quiet disappearance, sending messages into deep water and waiting for an echo that rarely came. When responses arrived, they were often rejections, sometimes long after I had stopped expecting them.
To keep my family afloat, I took whatever work I could find, including adjunct teaching, caregiving in long-term care facilities, and early education assistant. Those roles felt distant from the professional identity I had spent years building. But they also exposed me to people and circumstances I might have otherwise never encountered. Though, I could not always appreciate that perspective. They revealed systemic inequities and the extent to which opportunity depends on access to stability. And I came to understand that perseverance matters, but it is rarely sufficient on its own.
As I watch today’s federal workforce reductions unfold, I am reminded of that period of my life. Some people are being escorted out of their offices, resigning, or receiving notices and must adjust immediately. Others remain suspended in uncertainty, trying to plan against outcomes they cannot yet see. When decisions about your future are being made outside your control, the waiting becomes its own form of exhaustion, yet you must continue showing up anyway.
What strikes me now is how easily the personal cost of workforce reduction becomes numbers and line items in a spreadsheet. Positions are eliminated, budgets adjusted, organizational charts redrawn. Bureaucratic language and statistics further obscure lived experiences such as decisions postponing a mammogram or the next routine physical, conversations about what comes next, and uncertainty carried home at the end of each day.
What is also not visible is not only the loss of income, but the loss of direction. In conversations with colleagues who are part of the federal workforce, I hear how their work is tied to mission, purpose, and identity. When that is interrupted, what disappears is not only a job, but a sense of self and community.
Today, I am in a more stable place. I now serve as an epidemiologist with the Washington State Health Care Authority, where I again have the privilege of using science and data to improve people’s lives. Even after a decade marked by disruption and rebuilding, the same values that once kept me showing up to work continue to guide me.
Looking back, I am convinced that while achievements open doors, it is consistency that builds trust and relationships that carry us through turbulent times.
This time, I am not standing alone on the sidewalk. I am standing alongside colleagues, and with organizations such as, Stand Up for Science and Defend Public Health, working with many who are experiencing similar disruptions and navigating change together.